The class looked at the similarities and differences in emotions around the world. The class looked at whether universal emotions exist and discussed culture-specific emotions. There was a big emphasis on exact translations and diving into the semantics of emotion words and phrases. We compared cultural scripts to see the underlying influences of culture on attitudes towards emotions and the expression of those emotions. The class was so eye-opening and I've noticed things about how I view emotions, how American culture influences that, and also just realized that I need to be aware of the differences across cultures and not assume that what I feel or think is universal.
The final project for the class was to write a ten-page research paper on any topic related to the class. I chose to look at American Sign Language because it's a language that is very close to my heart, and I'm also going to be taking it this summer. Based on what we learned about the ways that culture and language both influence emotion, I began to wonder about emotional expression in ASL. I was interested because Deaf culture is a smaller culture within the dominant hearing American culture so I wanted to see if that affected expression. But I also wanted to research the way that the language itself impacts emotional expression because of the involvement of the face in its grammar.
I loved doing this paper. It was frustrating at the beginning but once I was able to narrow it down to a central question it all came together. I haven't fully answered my questions but I've created a basic understanding and potential hypothesis that I'd like to research more in the future.